We are looking forward to discussing the draft paper, "Writing History into the Economy of Nature: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and Lars Montin (1723-1793) on the Reindeer Warble Fly (Hypoderma tarandi L.)," with Staffan Müller-Wille (Cambridge). The paper will be discussed by Prof. Jia Hui Lee (U of Bayreuth)
Abstract: In the summer of 1732, a young medical student named Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) journeyed through Sápmi. Just under two decades later, Lars Montin (1723-1778), a student of the now widely known Uppsala professor Linnaeus, quite literally followed his teacher's footsteps. We will focus on the accounts that both naturalists gave in their travel journals of the parasitic reindeer warble fly Hypoderma tarandi. While Linnaeus integrated the life history of this fly with his idealized image of Sámi pastoralism as representing a 'silver age' of humanity in tune with the balance of nature, Montin mused about ways in which the fly's damaging effects on reindeer could be weaponized to change the course of history and force the Sámi into 'productive' labour. As a consequence, Linnaeus's timeless conception of an economy of nature was infused with notions of historical development and an open future. We will suggest that the differing attitudes of Linneaus and Montin can be explained by changes in the political context that shaped their respective expeditions--most notably an emerging effort to enforce national borders and fiscal regimes in Northern Scandinavia in the 1740s and 1750s. The different attitudes they developed towards the reindeer warble fly also point to deeper connections between natural history practices and the writing of human histories.
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